When it comes to Americans with evangelical beliefs, the survey found that a majority say that Jesus was the first and greatest being created by God the Father (78%). However, this is contrary to the historic Christian faith, and 97 percent of evangelicals do believe that there is one true God in three persons, but 3 out of 4 of them attempt to give Jesus first-place honors even though that belief has been rejected by the church down through the centuries.

This is a fairly close paraphrase, almost a quote, but I don't have time to paraphrase it better. I would add only that these evangelicals are conflating statements about Jesus with biblical traditions about wisdom.

Sunday, October 28, 2018

The Once and Future King

King Arthur

The quote below comes from T.H. White's novel The Once and Future King(1958), but in searching for the quote I found many misquotes. The purplish-pinkish word "which" was often left out, so I had to check if the word "which" was original, and it was (though without being purple pink), so do read without misgivings Merlin's wise words to the future king:

"The best thing for being sad . . . is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake in the middle of the night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you." (page 186)

Sound advice. I would add only that when one lies awake in bed in nighttime's darkest hours, then arise, go forth from thy bed to thy library, and, in that insomniac time, learn something.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Been Germane Franc Lend

We see here Franc Lend's theory of electricity as being composed of two colors - the red and the black - a theory reflected in the red and black wires used in electrical wiring today (along with a variable third color that Franc Lend didn't know about because the anti-Americans of Franc Lend's day kept the color a secret from him.)

We thus see how important Franc Lend's theory is even today, once again evidence of American technological and scientific superiority!

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

The Burden of Our Dreams

The Monster

I had a dream last night about Frankenstein's monster. For some reason, I was the object of that creature's wrath, as if I were Doctor Frankenstein himself. This monster differed from the original one in that it had to replace body parts every so often. These were ripped from innocent bystanders. Curiously, though, the monster could then use its electrical power to regenerate those now missing parts of the people missing them, such that it restored them to wholeness. I realize that this story makes no sense, but I'm not the one re-writing it!

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Visible Gorilla?

An article I was reading in a newspaper over the weekend spoke of the "famous 'Invisible Gorilla' experiment" as a great example of how we ignore things outside our basic interest.

I've never heard of this famous experiment, and the article never mentions it again. I could look it up, but I suspect it's a kind of trick to show I'm a fool for taking this seriously and wasting my time on it since there's no way to locate an invisible gorilla, so it's entirely outside my basic interest.

Tuesday, October 09, 2018

The Brave Moo: The Real Story

Hey diddle-diddle,
the cat and the fiddle,
the moo jumped
over the moon.
The little dog laughed
to see such sport,
and the dish ran away
with the spoon.

As for the moo, its moonly leap took it along a milky way as it went on to explore the far reaches of the galaxy and the even farther reaches of deep space, while the cow that you expected from this old rhyme remained behind, too cowed to attempt the spatial leap but taking a coward's credit for it anyway, that cowardly old cow!

Sunday, October 07, 2018

Gerard Manogue's Review of Jang Jung-il's Short Novel When Adam Opens His Eyes

Regular visitors will perhaps recall that Sun-Ae and I translated Jang Jung-il's Short Novel When Adam Opens His Eyes in 2013. While surfing through the Internet, I found that the book is still being read, or it was at least being read in 2016 by Gerard Manogue. His review is relatively long, so the quoted passages below are only a small part of what he actually says:

In a small Singapore bookstore (Books Actually, lovely place) I was intrigued to come across this novel, as I spent some time teaching in South Korea in 2013 and have always wanted to acquaint myself with the literary tradition. This book is also part of a more expansive Library of Korean Literature series, so I hope to read more of these titles in the future as I generate income.

* * *

This wistful, lonely novel gives us the story of a young Korean man — we never know his name but we get the biblical nickname 'Adam' — and a portrait of his life as a nineteen-year old transitioning from boy to man in Daegu, a major city in the southern part of the country. Adam enters a cram school with the goal of entering a top university, acquiescing to the desires of his mother, who works in an underground subway mall to pay for Adam's tuition. Disillusioned with his prospects and feeling lonesome and stuck, Adam helplessly and apathetically searches for an exit from convention, using sex, music, reading, and different forms of loitering as ineffective devices.

* * *

Overall I really enjoyed this book, and I recommend this book to anyone who wants a deeper perspective into the South Korean psyche, or just a bittersweet, heartache of a read.

Mr. Manogue apparently liked the translation, though he didn't specifically say so. At any rate, thanks to him for taking the time to read the novel translated by my wife and me! For blog readers who want to read the full review, click here.

About Me

I am a professor at Ewha Womans University, where I teach composition, research writing, and cultural issues, including the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history.
My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism.
I also work as one-half of a translating team with my wife, and our most significant translation is Yi Kwang-su's novel The Soil, which was funded by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested.
I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries.
Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."